An occasional feature to bring readers up to date with developments in PJ Online, the website version of The Pharmaceutical Journal, and to answer common questions about the service. PJ Online is available on the internet at www.pharmj.com
A facility to limit an archive search by date of publication has now been added to the PJ Online website.
Now nine months old, PJ Online already contains more than 3,500 pages of information. With so many pages to search, simple keyword searches may often retrieve more than 100 items. In order to make it easier and faster to retrieve exactly the information required, it is now possible to limit a search by date of publication. Using this facility PJ Online users can choose to read only those items published very recently, those within a certain date range, or just information from a specific issue of The Journal.
Searching by date is simple: dates are entered in the format dd/mm/yyyy into one or both of the boxes provided. For example, one can search for all articles published since the beginning of April by entering "01/04/2000" in the "search from" box, leaving the other box blank. To search only for articles published before the start of this year, one should enter "31/12/1999" in the "search up to" box, leaving the other box blank. To search for an item known to have been published in one of the November, 1999, issues, enter "01/11/1999" in the "search from" box and "30/11/1999" in the "search up to" box. If one knows the precise date of the relevant Journal issue, one can enter the exact publication date in both boxes.
It is still possible to limit a search to a specific section of The Journal by clicking on the relevant check box(es). For example a search can be limited to continuing education articles or letters pages.
It is also possible to search just the content of the other two journals available via PJ Online: Hospital Pharmacist and Primary Care Pharmacy. Date searching can be combined with the check boxes to restrict the number of pages searched even further.
PJ Online visitors who have difficulty using the search facility can refer to the on-line "Help with searching" page or can e-mail the website controller, Nada Savitch, at editor@pharmj.org.uk.